4
The Origins of Asia Provincia
In the period of twelve years between Mummius's departure from Greece in 145 and the crisis of the Attalid succession in 133 the Roman Senate betrayed little concern with Eastern affairs apart from maintaining a military presence in Macedonia to preserve the peace there. It would be useful to know more about what occasioned the famous grand tour of P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus to the cities and kingdoms of the East (perhaps now to be dated 144/143); in the current state of our evidence the best indication comes from Polybius's mention of a brief to settle the affairs of the kingdoms by ensuring that they were in the hands of the best claimant to the throne.[1] The Seleudd and Ptolemaic dynasties were indeed in turmoil in the later 140;[2] but since no change of rulers can be traced to the Roman embassy, it seems that it satisfied itself with confirmation of the status quo. Indeed, the most important consequence of the embassy was in the sphere of public relations: the ambassadors renewed Roman friendship with kings and cities alike and won great goodwill toward Rome by their behavior, manifested by a host of embassies from the East praising the Romans for sending such men to them (Diod. 33.28b.4). It would not be too bold to conclude that such diplomatic courtesies, rather than active intervention, were the chief objective of the mission.[3]
Rome's relations with Attalus II, king of Pergamum between 158 and 138, were dearly excellent. Attalus established Pergamene candidates upon the thrones of Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Syria (for a time) and reasserted Attalid hegemony across the Hellespont in eastern Thrace, all either with Rome's blessing or (in the case of Bithynia) without effective hindrance, ending in Roman recognition of Pergamum's success. If indeed at his accession to the throne he thought it wise "not to do anything without the Romans," he had soon won considerable freedom of action, as his invasion of Bithynia in 149, which overthrew Prusias II shows.[4] Timely assistance in the Roman wars with Andriscus and the Achaeans thereafter confirmed the dose ties between the two allies, freeing Attalus of any further worries about Roman suspicions that he may have entertained on his succession.[5] Attalus's masterful exploitation of his relationship with Rome was his greatest weapon in his revival of Pergamene power during the 140s.[6] There is no reason to think that Pergamene relations with Rome deteriorated under his successor and nephew, Attalus III (138-133).[7] The Roman intervention in Asia Minor after the death of Attalus III, leading to a permanent official presence thereafter, thus comes rather from out of the blue and cannot be regarded as anything but a quite sudden reversal of recent policy whose explanation must lie in the unfolding of the events that immediately followed the death of Attalus III. Unfortunately, many of the most important details of those events remain quite obscure to us, and subject to various interpretations. With a warning to the reader that there is little surrounding the Attalid legacy and the war with Aristonicus that
is not controversial and cannot be interpreted in more than one way, let us proceed.
Roman Intervention Against Aristonicus
Attalus Ill died most likely in the spring of 133,[8] having made the Roman people his heir not merely to his personal possessions and the royal treasury but to his kingdom.[9] Attalus had no progeny; but shortly or immediately after Attalus's death,[10] one Aristonicus, alleging to be an illegitimate son of Eumenes II, and thus Attalus's half brother, laid claim to the Pergamene throne, taking the royal name Eumenes (III).[11] It has recently been plausibly argued by a number of scholars that Aristonicus's support lay especially among the Greek and Macedonian veterans who had been settled by the Attalid kings in colonies in the interior of northwest Asia Minor and whose interest lay in the perpetuation of that monarchy.[12] It has gradually emerged that Aristonicus was no "social revolutionary"; this element in the tradition is probably merely a propagandistic interpretation of certain actions, such as recruitment of slaves, born out of desperate
straits.[13] On the other hand, Aristonicus's most determined foes were the Greek cities of the coast.[14] Aristonicus was able to rally to his cause some cities that were traditionally subject to the Attalids—of whom we know specifically only of Phocaea and Leucae near Smyrna; for others he had to fight.[15] We happen to know, however, that Smyrna withstood Aristonicus's attack, and that Elaea, Pergamum's port, and Bargylia in Carla apparently escaped capture.[16] But these setbacks by no means compensated for a wave of victories, including the capture of Myndos, Samos, and Colophon, which began to legitimize Aristonicus's royal claim.[17] For a brief period in 132 Aristonicus seems to have won control of much of the Attalid kingdom and significant parts of Ionia.[18] The tide, however, quickly turned: the Ephesian fleet defeated Aristonicus off Cumae, forcing his retreat inland, chased by a newly cohesive alliance of cities now joined by the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia.[19] All this had happened (so it would seem from the sequence of events given in our best source, Strabo) before the arrival of the five Roman commissioners sent in response to the news of Attalus's death and the legacy, which cannot be before early 132.[20]
The strong resistance of many Greek cities to Aristonicus is not difficult to explain. There are some indications—not, to be sure, quite decisive—that Attalus's will recognized many of the cities of his kingdom as "free," as he certainly did Pergamum, if that is the city that produced a famous text found in its theater.[21] Livy's epitomator had the impression that the will freed "Asia" (i.e., the former kingdom, soon to be Asia provincia; Per . 59). Ti. Gracchus's declaration that it was not the Senate's business but the people's (as heir)[22] to discuss the cities of Attalus's kingdom (Plut. Ti. Gracch . 14.2) strongly implies that some issue regarding their status had to be settled by the Romans, and the context of Gracchus's claim strongly suggests that it involved revenues of the populus Romanus , which would be lost if the cities were "freed." Taking the parallel of the procedure envisioned in the inscription just noted, in which the status of the city conferred by the will remained to be ratified by the Romans (line 7), it is most plausible that Gracchus was intending to have the assembly deride whether or not an Attalid provision for the cities' freedom was to be ratified. A new Ephesian era beginning in 134/133 has been plausibly explained as a reference to a grant of "freedom" in that year under Attalus's bequest, and certainly that city's signal resistance to Aristonicus, culminating in its naval victory off Cumae, which was the turning point of the war, must mean that it had something to lose were the Pergamene monarchy resumed.[23] Certainly, the freedom of the Asian cities from tribute at the beginning of Asia provincia is explicitly alluded to by Appian (BC 5.4).
Ephesus and Pergamum, then, had good reasons of their own to resist Aristonicus, which need not therefore be explained, as by Justin, with reference to fear of the Romans (36.4.7): as we shall see, the evidence does not favor the notion that the Senate had as yet taken a side on the issue.
The ideals of freedom, autonomy, and "democracy" (as opposed to royal domination) were by no means dead,[24] and they had in any case a hard, practical manifestation: the renunciation of royal tribute. So much the more will cities not formerly subject to Attalus III, like Samos, Smyrna, and Colophon in Ionia, and Myndus in Caria, have viewed with alarm Aristonicus's energetic military expansionism.[25] For these cities, Aristonicus's legitimacy or lack of it was not the real issue; he was "breaking the peace" by invading their territory, as the citizens of Halicarnassus claimed in an extant text.[26] The significance of Aristonicus's attack on Ionia and Carla has never been sufficiently stressed: it was this that transformed the attempt of a perhaps questionable heir to win the Attalid kingdom into an offensive war against its neighbors. The parallel with Andriscus is striking: in both cases, dubious credentials to the throne were best overcome by offensive military adventures recalling the glory of earlier kings. It is probably no accident that at least two of the cities Aristonicus is known to have attacked, Smyrna and Colophon, were former Attalid dependencies not restored to Pergamum after the peace of 188:[27] like Andriscus in his invasion of Thessaly, Aristonicus hoped to justify his assumption of monarchic power by restoring the dynasty's former dependencies.
The Greek cities need not have waited for certain news from Rome of the will's ratification to have taken measures for their protection against Aristonicus. Already in 133, before the Roman reaction to the Attalid legacy was known, the Pergamene assembly decreed the extension of citizenship to resident aliens, soldiers, military colonists, and others.[28] Meanwhile, however, we must suppose, in light of prevailing second-century
practice, that a host of embassies descended upon Rome from those Greek dries of Asia Minor that wished to preserve or secure their independence, traditional or newly affirmed by the Attalid legacy; it is incredible that they would have allowed Aristonicus to threaten them without making an effort to enlist Rome on their side. As it happens, even in the very poor state of our evidence some details have survived of this diplomatic effort. Very shortly after Attalus's death, a Pergamene named Eudemus caused something of a sensation in the midst of the Gracchan crisis by bringing the will to Rome (Plut Ti. Gracch . 14.1-2). There can be little doubt about the purpose of this embassy: Eudemus's courting of Ti. Gracchus was an attempt to prod Rome toward acceptance and ratification of the will—for the Attalid inheritance would be very useful in the financing of Gracchus's plans.[29] Colophon, too, under attack by Aristonicus, cannot but have appealed to Rome; as it happens, a recently published inscription from Claros recalls two exceedingly important embassies to Rome undertaken around this time by one Menippus "on behalf of the city" (Colophon), in which he managed to preserve its "privileges."[30] Colophon's chief privilege was the freedom granted it by the Romans themselves in 188 (see n. 25); it was surely this privilege that was threatened in 133 by Aristonicus. It seems likely that the first of Menippus's embassies belongs to 133 and the second to the conclusion of the war, when Colophon's freedom must have been reaffirmed. Another great man of Colophon, Polemaeus, undertook an important embassy to Rome at a time of great danger by land and sea (thus most likely before Aristonicus was confined to the interior and well before Roman intervention); the friendships he won with important Romans he used to benefit his fellow citizens; he established relations of patronage between the chief men and Colophon.[31] Other such embassies
at the beginning of Aristonicus's rising may be alluded to as well in an inscription from Cyzicus and in a recently published decree from Gordos in Mysia.[32]
It is against this background of the progress of the crisis in Asia in 133-132 that Rome's response must be understood. It must be kept in mind that the question of the Attalid succession was surely quite uncertain in 133, especially viewed from Rome. Attalus III had died, and someone who claimed to be his half brother, and son of Eumenes II, had asserted his right to the throne. Who was to say that he was not the legitimate successor? Unlike the case of the Macedonian pretender Andriscus, our sources are by no means clear on this point; indeed only Velleius Paterculus (2.4.1) explicitly denies the claim of Aristonicus/Eumenes III.[33] It was perhaps hardly manifest that Attalus's will had indeed come into effect, for the only precedent, the will of Ptolemy VIII in 155, explicitly made the Roman people his heir only in the absence of other heirs, and Attalus's testament may well have had the same provision.[34] This would have made the execution of the will dependent on a judgment upon Aristonicus's royal credentials. In any case, it has been pointed out that royal wills instituting the Roman people as heir seem as a rule to have been produced by kings without successors, at least at the time of writing; the best explanation for them is the king's desire to arrange for a smooth and beneficial succession in the absence of direct heirs.[35] Certainly there is no known case of the Roman people inheriting in place of acknowledged heirs to a kingdom. Again, therefore, everything will have depended on whether Aristonicus would be judged the legitimate successor to the throne of the Attalids.
It seems probable that the claims of legality and equity were rather complex and perhaps impenetrable from Rome's distance. Where claims of justice clash, self-interest will often cast the deciding vote—yet even here, arguments did not lead all one way. Those cities granted freedom under the terms of Attalus's will, such as Pergamum at the least, will certainly have had no doubts about whether it had come into effect. To emphasize the point, Pergamum's ambassador Eudemus evidently brought to Rome some of the royal accoutrements.[36] In Rome, Ti. Gracchus dearly had political reasons to push for acceptance, but this in itself will have provoked opposition among senators, many of whom will have viewed with alarm the effects this windfall would have for the outcome of the struggle with the tribune. Had Rome not been served well by the Pergamene kings? Would it not send the wrong signal to uproot an allied kingdom on questionable claims of legality? Roman manpower was stretched to its limit already—indeed, this was on any account an important element of the crisis of 133. Could it stand the further strain of a new war in Asia Minor—for assertion of the validity of the will meant war with Aristonicus—and perhaps that of garrisoning western Asia Minor afterwards, while the slave war in Sicily was still raging and the long, harsh conflict in Spain was only just coming to a close? The acquisition of Attalid reserves and revenues may not have sufficiently balanced these counterarguments to intervention in Asia Minor. Pergamum (or another, nearby city) does not appear to have regarded Roman acceptance of the legacy as a sure thing.[37]
The evidence of the Roman response to the news of Attalus's death is so scarce and lacunose that it must be said in all fairness that it is not grossly inconsistent with diametrically opposed interpretations,[38] but, in balance, there seems little doubt that it is more harmonious with the view that the Senate acted with circumspection and hesitancy than the reverse. We hear of a proposal by Ti. Gracchus for the use of the money in the Attalid legacy to assist and outfit the beneficiaries of his lex agraria , as well as his announcement about settling the status of the cities in the assembly, but there is no good evidence that a law was actually passed on either of these matters, and it seems likely that any such usurpation of the
Senate's prerogative concerning foreign affairs would have sparked contentions that would not have escaped notice in our evidence, inasmuch as the mere threat to decide about the cities had the effect it did.[39] A Greek translation of a senatus consultum found in Pergamum, which embodies or presupposes the Senate's ratification of the Attalid legacy, is often supposed to date to 133, which would imply that the Senate indeed moved with alacrity. But in fact this date is based simply on the once-unchallenged assumption that the Senate would have accepted the legacy as quickly as possible—a petitio principii for our purposes. Recent discussions of the date of the document make a convincing case against 133; indeed, a date rather closer to M'. Aquillius's return from the East in 126 is in my view most probable.[40] In any case, given the uncertainty of its precise date, the senatus consultum Popillianum cannot be used to show that the Senate had determined as early as 133 to take over the Attalid kingdom and maintain a permanent military presence in Asia Minor. Most likely, the issue of the Attalid legacy was simply buried in the strife and subsequent tension that engulfed the city in the latter half of 133.[41]
In January 132 Asia was not assigned as a provincia to either consul; the first priority for both consuls was dearly the inquest into the Gracchani, after which P. Rupilius left for operations against the rebels in Sicily.[42] In early 132, then, immediate military action against Aristonicus was not envisioned, and it is an open question whether hostilities with the claimant to the Attalid throne were seen as imminent.[43] The flight of Blossius, Ti. Gracchus's friend and adviser, to Aristonicus after the Gracchan inquest is not a dear sign of growing tension with Rome, for the refuge from Rome's power afforded by a Hellenistic king's court did not presuppose hostility.[44] However, it is dear that early in 132 the Senate began to
intervene diplomatically in the Asian crisis. After the Gracchan inquest five envoys were sent to Asia, among them P. Scipio Nasica, who had led the attack on Ti. Gracchus and was now allegedly an embarrassment in Rome.[45] By the time they arrived in Asia Minor much fighting had already occurred. Indeed, Aristonicus's offensive against the cities of the coast had been turned back after the battle off Cumae, and he had been driven into the interior; after the cities and kings had sent troops against him, but still before the Roman commission arrived, he had launched further raids (Strabo 14.1.38, C646). Unless we compress unduly the chronology of Aristonicus's campaigns we must assume that the Senate had already known about them at the time the embassy was dispatched. Thus the embassy makes best sense as a mission of investigation sent in response to the appeals of the Greek cities of the coast under attack from Aristonicus.[46] Clearly, in the face of Aristonicus's armed assertion of his claim to the Pergamene throne, mere legati without military forces will not have been sent to take over the inheritance or to "organize a province."[47] But after the arrival of the envoys in Asia Minor, the pace of senatorial reaction picks up, and at the beginning of 131 one of the provinces decreed for the consuls was Asia and the war against Aristonicus.[48] The vigorous contention over the command between them and then with P. Scipio Aemilianus, involving no less than two appeals to the people (Cic. Phil . 11.18), dearly reveals how attractive the command was. That is fully explained by the riches of the Attalids and the apparent imbalance of strength (the tide had already been turned, after all, by tiny Ephesus, and Aristonicus had been thrown back into the interior)—all the more reason for surprise that no action had been taken in 132, when one consul appears to have been free.
The report of the senatorial commission to Asia Minor must have been decisive in tilting the Senate toward action to assert Rome's claim to the Attalid kingdom against Aristonicus.
What motivated the change? I have argued that Rome's initial slowness to act in 133-132 is to be explained by the complexity of the legal and political situation in Asia Minor as well as by the turmoil of the Gracchan crisis at home: the Senate needed to find its way dear in a maze of Hellenistic politics and determine where Roman interest lay. But by the time the envoys arrived in 132, the pace of events in Asia Minor had far outstripped Roman deliberation. As we have seen, they found Aristonicus driven inland and beset by a coalition of Greek cities and the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia (Strabo 14.1.38, C646).[49] Accepting Aristonicus as the legitimate Attalid heir was hardly now a viable option. On the other hand, the end of the Attalids left a vacuum in the configuration of power in Asia Minor that was already being filled by ambitious dynasts without Roman participation; Rome would hardly be able to control the outcome of the collapse of its oldest ally in Asia Minor, long a friendly bulwark of stability, without direct intervention and assertion of its imperium . As it happened, the conclusion of the Numantine War in Spain and the Sicilian revolt freed Roman military resources for use elsewhere. The will of At-talus lay ready to hand as a pretext for intervention; by accepting it Rome could once again pose as the champion of Greek freedom and the defender of its allies.[50] The Roman response to the Pergamene crisis of 133-131 is characterized not so much by belligerence, or a hesitation born of indifference, as opportunism and an abiding commitment to maintain its imperium .
The Settlement of the War With Aristonicus
Aristonicus proved a tougher nut to crack than expected. P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the consul of 131, actually fell in battle against the Pergamene pretender, while his successor, M. Perperna, died of illness at the moment of victory after capturing Aristonicus. A third consul, M'. Aquillius, had to complete operations with a campaign against holdouts in the interior after his arrival in 129.[51] If Strabo is to be taken strictly at his word (14.1.38, C646), it appears a commission of ten senators to arrange the settlement accompanied Aquillius to the provincia already in 129. Aquillius probably did not leave Asia Minor until early in 126, for he triumphed on 11 November of that year (Fasti triumph . an. DCXXVII).
Unfortunately, one of the most obscure and controversial features of the settlement over which Aquillius presided is the extent of the former Attalid realm and its revenues now claimed by Rome. Given the state of our evidence, no reconstruction can be decisive; but we can attempt to reach the conclusion that is most consistent with the evidence.
It is dear from our evidence for Aquillius's territorial arrangements after the war that he gave away a good portion of the prizes of victory to Rome's royal allies, who had provided generous assistance.[52] The sons of Ariarathes of Cappadocia, who had fallen in the war, were given Lycaonia and probably the Attalid holdings in Pamphylia and Pisidia as well.[53] Besides the Cappadocian kings, Mithridates V of Pontus was the greatest beneficiary of the settlement, receiving as his reward Greater Phrygia.[54] Although we hear nothing of rewards for Nicomedes of Bithynia and Pylaemenes of Paphlagonia, both of whom had certainly joined the alliance against Aristonicus, this may mean only that their gains were less spec-
tacular.[55] Aquillius's generosity immediately got him into trouble in Rome. A passage in Appian indicates that the Senate actually rejected his acta on the grounds that he had been bribed; specifically, he was alleged to have been bribed by Mithridates for Phrygia, but other, similar charges are suggested in our evidence.[56] Subsequently, a rogatio Aufeia of perhaps 124 would apparently have assigned some territory to Mithridates that was also claimed by Nicomedes.[57] Embassies from both kings arrived in Rome to strive for and against it. Gaius Gracchus spoke against the proposal, alleging that both kings were freely dispensing bribes; a preserved fragment of his speech suggests that a possible outcome of rejection of the proposal was the assertion of a Roman claim over the territory and its revenues.[58] Picking up on his elder brother's attempt to use the Asian revenues to support his project of land distribution, Gracchus stressed that they were a crucial resource both for government and for maintaining the "benefits" (commoda ) of the Roman people.[59] Among the commoda alluded to was surely above all the land distribution program itself, which
was stalled by the early 120s.[60] Aquillius's diminution of the people's inheritance thus could be represented as a part of a conspiracy to cheat the plebs of its due.
It is hardly likely, in view of Aquillius's evident readiness to distribute portions of the winnings to those who had assisted Rome, that the Greek cities that formerly belonged to the Attalid kingdom but had resisted Aristonicus, and indeed had managed to turn him back before Roman help was sent, were now rewarded for their help by being forced to pay tribute to Rome. That would have been a perverse reversal of normal Roman practice, employed, for example, in Asia Minor in 188, which was to free of tributary obligations those communities that demonstrated their commitment to the Roman side while the issue was still in doubt—-certainly not to punish them. In the cases of Pergamum, Ephesus, and Colophon, we have direct evidence that their "freedom" was recognized.[61] Elaea received a treaty of alliance with Rome after the war, an honor hardly consistent with being reduced to tributary status; Tralles as well an Attalid possession since 188, seems to have been "free" in 98, a status that should go back to the conclusion of the war with Aristonicus.[62] These, as we saw above, were not the only cities to offer noteworthy resistance to Aristonicus,[63] and we must surely conclude that the number of cities "freed," or whose freedom was now confirmed, by Rome was rather larger than the number for which evidence happens to have survived. Perhaps, indeed, most of the Greek cities of the coast belonged to this category.[64]
As it happens, one text, a speech attributed by Appian to M. Antony in Ephesus in 42/41, explicitly says that originally the Romans had remitted the tribute formerly exacted by Attalus "until the emergence of demagogues among us [sc. Romans] made tribute necessary."[65] The passage is not without problems; in particular, what it implies about the origin of tribute from the Greek cities is difficult to understand. Gruen suggests that C. Gracchus, who certainly might be called a demagogue, not only instituted the sale of the Asian tax contracts by the censors in Rome, as is attested in other evidence, but also first imposed Roman tribute in Asia.[66] However, it would then be surprising that an innovation of such sweeping significance receives so little attention in our sources for C. Gracchus's tribunate.[67] Instead of rejecting the entire passage as a fabrication by Antony or an ill-informed guess by Appian, we might associate it with the evidence already examined for controversy over and revision of Aquillius's settlement. It may be that Aquillius had granted a blanket exemption from tribute to all the former cities of the Attalid kingdom, adhering, it seems likely, to the letter of the will, but that subsequently, in Rome, popular politicians associated with the Gracchan land reform had exploited resentment of such squandering of the populus's possessions and whittled these exemptions down to cover only those cities that had earned their freedom by their conspicuous assistance in the war.[68] But even this last category cannot have been small as we have seen, inasmuch as the Greek cities of the coast had offered Aristonicus resistance from the first, and only Phocaea and Leucae (by Smyrna) are known to have yielded to him without
a struggle.[69] In any case, of course, Antony/Appian's statement applies only to the Greek cities. Those areas that came into Rome's possession and were not exempted or given away to the allied kings are likely to have been made subject to Roman tribute already at the conclusion of the war. Hence Velleius's flat statement in his survey of Rome's conquests that "M. Perperna made Asia tributary after the capture of Aristonicus" is not entirely mistaken, although he is thinking in very rough categories here ("Asia") and throughout the passage, as here, he sloppily conflates military victory with the imposition of tribute and the establishment of provinces in a way that shows how little this writer of the early Principate understood Roman techniques of domination in the East in the second century.[70]
Large portions of the former Attalid kingdom, therefore, had been parceled out to allied kings (Phrygia, Lycaonia, probably Pamphylia and Pisidia), and many of the Greek cities will have received their "freedom" and exemption from a tributary obligation. It is important to recognize the limits of Roman control in other directions as well. Toward the south neither Lycia nor Caria had been part of the Attalid kingdom, nor is there any evidence that they came under Roman control in the war; there matters will have continued as before.[71] A second-century alliance between Plarasa/Aphrodisias, Cibyra, and Tabae explicitly guarded against actions hostile to Rome as well as to themselves; this is simply another example to be added to others of a "saving clause," useful in a time of predominant Roman might in the Greek world, which would allow an escape from treaty obligations if one's ally had serious trouble with Rome. It certainly does not imply any sort of formal "clientship" or Roman sponsorship of the alliance.[72] Cibyra, which enjoyed a treaty of alliance with Rome, remained
under its own tyrants until captured by L. Murena in 83; nor is there good reason to think that Laodicea on the Lycus, not an Attalid possession or a theater of fighting, came under Roman control in the war with Aristonicus.[73] Aquillius oversaw the improvement of the major routes of communication both along the coast and inland, one up the Hermus into Lydia, an Attalid domain which must now have come under Roman control and the other up the Maeander to or toward Apamea.[74] It has been supposed that this road up the Maeander leading toward the major city of southern Phrygia clashes with our sources' statement that Phrygia Maior was given to Mithridates,[75] but that may be drawing lines too sharply. The difficulty of exerting control from the coast over the rough Anatolian inland, where on the upper Caicus Aristonicus had had his stronghold, had played an important role in the war just concluded. The significance of this problem seems not to have been lost on Aquillius, who had followed up Perperna's victory over Aristonicus himself at Stratonicea on the upper Caicus with an arduous campaign in the mountains and forests of Mysia Abbaitis.[76] If the roads up the Hermus and Maeander imply that Aquillius wanted to guard against a repeat of Aristonicus's performance based in central Lydia, eastern Caria, or southern Phrygia, this need not imply the assertion of a formal Roman claim equally to all those areas. The road to Apamea in any case may well have been built before Mithridates took occupation of Phrygia.
It appears, then, that the area of Asia Minor subject to Roman tribute was rather a patchwork of communities and regions concentrated chiefly in Mysia and Lydia, with some outposts on the Aegean, such as Phocaea and Leucae, interspersed with the autonomous Greek cities of the coast. Indeed, the two cities in which Roman commanders henceforth spent most of their time in peace—Ephesus and Pergamum—were both autonomous,
and surely now, as well as later, major centers for his judicial activities.[77] The seemingly irresistible temptation to presuppose that a contiguous area was marked out with formal boundaries seems in this case particularly inappropriate, for if they meant anything—that is, if they defined a commander's imperium —they would only have gotten in the way of his executing his responsibilities in the region.[78]
A salutary sign of how the complexities of such a situation had to be worked out and defined by experience is now given by a newly published inscription from Claros. In it we hear that Roman officials had usurped some of Colophon's local jurisdiction, demanding bail from accused citizens for appearance before their court; Menippus of Colophon had gone on an embassy to the Senate at a date probably not far from 120 and succeeded in inducing it to draw an explicit distinction for the purpose of jurisdiction between the provincia and autonomous regions, to pronounce that a proconsul was not to judge or meddle at all outside the provincia , and to guarantee that all trials in which Colophonians were plaintiffs or defendants should be judged in Colophon.[79] All this would hardly have been necessary if a relatively recent lex provinciae had given a comprehensive structure to Roman administration in Asia Minor; certainly it is impossible to believe that Roman commanders had been explicitly forbidden to intervene outside the area directly subject to their control. More likely, Colophon had simply obtained recognition of its continued "freedom" at the close of the war with Aristonicus,[80] and the details of what precisely this meant beyond nonpayment of tribute were left for time to sort out. In view of this evidence it is surely difficult to suppose that Aquillius and the ten commissioners gave western Asia Minor a new ju-
dicial structure. Certainly the impression one gains from the senatus consultum Popillianum , which enjoins successive praetors to honor all regulations, grants, exemptions, or penalties laid down, given, or imposed by the Attalids, is that as much as possible of previous structures was left in place.[81] Much recent work has gone into the early history of the system of judicial assizes, held annually in the praetor's tour of the centers of districts called conventus or
. It would be rash to take this judicial structure back to Aquillius; far more likely is its gradual and natural development as the extent of proconsular jurisdiction expanded through the late second and early first centuries.[82]
Still, Aquillius and the ten commissioners will have had much to attend to within the area over which Rome now assumed control: a multitude of details had to be taken care of, such as the transformation of royal lands into Roman ager publicus ,[83] and arrangements for the collection of revenues from the old Attalid domains, including the inland peoples (
, especially Mysians and Lydians), the "crown land" (), and those cities, such as Stratonicea on the Caicus, that had supported Aristonicus. In view of the senatorial decision to uphold the arrangements of the Attalids and the Roman tendency to adopt viable local financial structures, it would be surprising if the Pergamene financial structures were not simply taken over. The newly published copy of the imperial lex portorii Asiae from Ephesus at least proves that the publicani took over At-talus's customs stations, and we can probably presume that most of the toll structure was taken over as well.[84]
So much seems traceable of the arrangements of Aquillius and the ten legates sent to assist him in the settlement of the Asian war. While Strabo, in a brief survey of Rome's entry into Asia Minor occasioned by his narrative's arrival at Leucae, makes Aquillius the author of the structure of Asia provincia as Strabo found it in his own day,[85] it would be unwise to extract from this cursory comment a more elaborate and sweeping settlement than our more detailed evidence suggests. The assertion, certainly, is not strictly accurate. As we have seen, some at least of Aquillius's arrangements seem to have been rejected by the Senate, and major features of the Asian settlement continued to be the subject of proposals and legislation such as the obscure rogatio Aufeia and the crucial lex Sempronia , which introduced censorial sale of the contracts for Asian revenues. Strabo is not only unaware of or unconcerned with these modifications and changes, but also ignores (to restrict ourselves to larger matters about which we happen to know) the major alteration of the tax-farming system by Caesar in 48 and the reduction of many cities to tributary status and more direct proconsular supervision under the Sullan settlement.[86] Still, in the broad terms that Strabo is here employing, the statement is doubtless generally correct, inasmuch as it was Aquillius and the ten legates who laid down the basis for Rome's future possession of what was left of the former Attalid kingdom after the grants to the kings and cities.
An important question must now be asked. Since so much of the former Attalid kingdom was not taken over by Rome for reasons of policy—Rome's traditional stance of patronage toward the Greek cities, and the imperative to reward allies in a crisis—how rich were Roman revenues from Asia after Aquillius, and before the catastrophe of the First Mithridatic War and the Sullan settlement? The evidence, derived above all from Cicero, for a staggering annual income from Asia has little relevance for
the period before the catastrophe of the First Mithridatic War and the Sullan settlement, which reduced the number of "free" Greek cities to a handful and brought considerably more territory under Roman control.[87] Historians of Roman politics have usually not been sensitive to the possible extent of change over the six or so decades before the evidence of Cicero appears, and have continually presented Asia as an immediate bonanza.[88] But on closer analysis was it so?
The question is of course easier to ask than to answer. Ti. Gracchus, as we have seen, was eager to take over Attalus's riches and exploit them for the sake of his program of land redistribution; it seems likely, indeed, that popular expectations of a windfall played a role in the assignment of the war against Aristonicus to P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus in 131. That around this time the possibility of winning wealth in Asia as a publicanus was a subject of conversation in Rome is dearly implied by a fragment of the satirist Lucilius.[89] Around 124 C. Gracchus dearly articulates such hopes in his speech against the Aufeian law: revenues ought to be increased in order not only to finance government but to pay for the Roman people's privileges.[90] Aquillius, who had solid reasons of foreign policy for sacrificing so much, was nevertheless, and perhaps with some justice, suspected of having lined his pockets with bribes while giving away the people's property. Evidently, then, the Gracchani argued strongly for maximizing revenues and counterattacked sharply. Although Aquillius was acquitted
of the extortion charge laid against him on his return before a jury of his peers—a blow that led directly to C. Gracchus's introduction of equestrian juries—the Senate did not accept Aquillius's settlement without modifications. Some tributary exemptions were very likely removed, among other things, as we have seen. But even so there is at least one indication that the usual view that the sums coming in from Asia Minor were nothing less than staggering is exaggerated. Neither of our main sources for the tribunates of C. Gracchus in 123-122, Appian and Plutarch, so much as mentions the lex Sempronia de censoria locatione , and yet it is accorded considerable weight in modern interpretations.[91] When Diodorus claims that Gaius "offered up the provinces [sic ] to the brazen greed of the publicani , thereby drawing forth from its subjects a just hatred of Roman domination,"[92] he must be thinking primarily of the introduction of equestrian juries, which he has just mentioned. Diodorus is notoriously hostile to C. Gracchus, and his source, Posidonius of Apamea, was particularly interested in the moral aspect of Rome's financial exploitation of its subjects, which was so rampant in his homeland in his own time;[93] it is by no means improbable that Posidonius or Diodorus has illegitimately traced back to its origin the excesses that would ultimately ensue from Gaius's legislation. It is in fact not until around 100—and then quite suddenly—that we hear of specific cases of overreaching by the publicani .[94] While the clustering of evidence at that time is surely at least partly due to a new alertness on the part of the Senate to the dangers of allowing the tax
gatherers too much free rein, the complete absence of complaints about the publicani before then is noteworthy. While our evidence is quite sparse in general for relations between the Greek cities and Roman authorities in the generation after Aquillius, the new decrees from Claros now cast some light on this period: they provide a perhaps surprising picture of smooth and cordial relations ca. 120 between Colophon and a solicitous Senate that is ever ready to check the excesses of its officials in the province.[95] And it should be noted that the most significant point of conflict with Roman authorities is jurisdictional; none of the many embassies to Roman commanders and the Senate that Polemaeus and Menippus undertook on their city's behalf concerned encroachments of the publicani .
The Claros decrees therefore help to moderate our imaginative reconstruction of an army of Roman tax gatherers straining at the reins of senatorial government and finally unleashed by C. Gracchus. The transferral of the arrangements for tax contracts in Asia from the provincial commander's supervision to that of the censors in Rome was, to be sure, a boon to Roman financiers, but it is very hard to accept the view that it was above all a tactical ploy to win the support of the equestrian order. Not only would it be hard to explain Appian's and Plutarch's silence about such an important development in the Gracchan crisis, but one comes up against the hard fact that the equestrian order was not conspicuously supportive of Gaius and indeed eventually became hostile.[96] These reflections give further support to the far more attractive view that Gaius's main object in moving the farming of the tax contracts to Rome was to remove the new revenues from the hands of the proconsuls, who, whether because of corruption or for reasons of policy, might not extract the full sum to which the populus Romanus deemed itself entitled.[97]
One further point deserves attention. The military contingent regularly supplied to successive praetors of Asia Minor has been estimated at no
more than a legion with its complement of Italian troops, if that much.[98] This will not have sufficed to do more than provide praetors with an appropriate escort and a policing capability. Asia provincia was not to be a theater for triumph hunting or for the flexing of military muscle. It offered no real possibilities for military gloria until the conflict with Mithridates,[99] and thus it was hardly an easy stepping-stone into the consulate: of the whole period after the departure of Aquillius in 126 until the war with Mithridates, we know of only four proconsuls of Asia who went on to the consulship.[100] (Admittedly we are not well informed on Asian proconsuls of the period; but C. Labeo, L. Piso, M. Hypsaeus, C. Egnatius, Cn. Aufidius, C. Billienus, L. Lucilius, and C. Cluvius made no mark in the rest of the evidence we have for Roman politics in this period,[101] and C. Caesar's chief distinction was, it seems, to have been the dictator's father.) The occupation of the core of the old Attalid kingdom therefore was not motivated by an atavistic militaristic impulse toward ever-greater control and conquest, nor even were Roman forces sufficient to suppress internal revolt
or fend off external invasion. The farthest outpost of Rome's eastern imperium was also among its weakest.
As in the events of 148-146 in Macedonia and Greece, Rome's response to the crisis of the Attalid kingdom and its result—an abiding Roman presence in Asia Minor—appear at first glance to manifest a new expansionism and a novel policy of exploiting the imperium to the fullest. Yet closer scrutiny demonstrates the superficiality of such a view. The Romans did not seek intervention in Asia Minor in 133 but found their leisurely deliberations overtaken by events; at last, in 132, not to intervene would have thrown the imperium itself into question. Having accepted the Attalid legacy, the Romans did not retire from Asia Minor, perhaps mindful of the likely consequences in a land replete with ambitious dynasts. But the forces they maintained in Asia provincia were obviously insufficient to fend off external invasion or even to suppress internal revolt. That Rome's farthest outpost was so weakly defended bespeaks indeed a remarkable confidence in the imperium . Just as in the southern Balkans, the imperium populi Romani was founded not on military occupation or legal structures but on an image of invincibility and the absence—for the time being—of rivals. Nor does the nature of Aquillius's arrangements in Asia, so far as they are known, suggest that Rome had given up its long tradition of hegemonial imperialism for a new policy of exploitation associated with the Gracchi and their followers. Aquillius relinquished to allied kings and the Greek cities much formerly Attalid territory and revenue, so much indeed that his settlement appears to have excited some opposition in the Senate as well as among the Gracchani. And yet, as Strabo says, his settlement remained largely intact. It is true that from 133 popular politicians began to assert the right of the Roman people to exploit imperial revenues to maintain its commoda . And yet such claims had little concrete effect on the broad outlines of the settlement of Asia provincia in the 120s, and even the innovation of C. Gracchus that was eventually to attract so much attention—the sale in Rome of the contracts for Asian revenue—took nearly a generation for its consequences to be acutely felt. The attitudes that underlay the origin of Asia provincia were rooted in the past, just as new forces were emerging whose impact lay in the future.